Category: Audio/Visual Equipment

This post contains affiliate links so that if you buy these things – at no additional cost to you – I can make a little extra cash for showing you how to inexpensively light your facecams.

So about a year back, I made a brief attempt at being a camgirl. (Don’t get excited, it’s was non-nude and I wasn’t cut out for it.) In preparing for that venture, I did a lot of research and learned that you’re expected to light your feed so that your viewers can actually see you. So I bought this lighting kit and assembled it in front of my desk. (I still use this kit for filming clips, and would recommend it if you need something for that.) It worked out pretty great until I wanted to rearrange my office and put the back of my desk up against a wall.

Before, I had plenty of space for these two giant umbrellas to stand in front of me. In my desk’s new location, though, there was no way to position them correctly. The only place to put one – and only one – was far off to one side so that dark shadows would be cast on the right side of my face in my feed. By this point, I had given up on camming, and instead of had decided to try Twitch. On Twitch, lighting is also pretty crucial because the facecam is an important part of connecting with viewers there too.

A thought then occurred to me: what if I just stick a selfie light on my webcam? Selfie lights are small, but give off enough light to take good cellphone pictures. They should be bright enough to light my face if I’m sitting a foot and a half away, right? Most people take selfies from farther than that. Then I followed the next logical conclusion to that thought: I wonder if someone has made a webcam with a selfie light built in.

The following post includes affiliate links to products on amazon.com. If you buy these things via these links, I get a commission at no additional cost to you. They haven’t sent me any of these things for free, nor have they asked me to write about these products. I just figured if I send them business, I may as well get compensated for it.

I mean, they work just fine as headphones so I’m not exactly crying false advertisement. And I suppose technically they could be used for gaming, if that game were on a cellphone or possibly the Nintendo DS. Because the headset uses a 4-pin jack, which combines the headphones and the mic into a single cable, you can’t use it with most PC’s which have separate jacks for audio and mic. I am to understand that the current generation of gaming consoles are compatible with the 4-pin jack, but it leaves us last-gen plebians with our dicks hangin’ out.

Nonetheless, it is possible to make these headphones interface with both the PC and the PlayStation 3. It requires more equipment, sure, but for some it is a worthwhile endeavor.